Amazon to invest $700M to retrain 100K employees

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Dive Brief:

Amazon plans to invest $700 million to upskill 100,000 of its employees in the United States by 2025. As part of its "Upskilling 2025" initiative, courses will include software engineering, information technology, AWS cloud and machine learning, according to a press release.

Programs include Associate2Tech, which helps fulfillment center employees to move into technical IT roles, and Machine Learning University​, which aims to help employees with a background in technology and coding gain skills in machine learning.

Dive Insight:

This is not the first time Amazon has looked within its own ranks to try and unearth needed talent. In May, Amazon expanded its Delivery Service Partners program to current Amazon employees. The program provides $10,000 in funding for current Amazon employees looking to start their own parcel delivery business. The Delivery Service Partners will directly aid Amazon's business. The effort will help Amazon get packages to where they need to go by expanding its logistics network with new delivery businesses.

The programs announced this week to reskill current employees in IT and software engineering will also benefit Amazon, allowing the company to gain technical talent without having to fight over the very small pool of qualified workers.

Hiring skilled workers has been listed as a top challenge by supply chain professionals for the last four years in the MHI Industry Report. "Companies continue to be severely hampered in their ability to implement digital technologies due to the shortage of workers with the necessary skills to run them," the most recent report reads.

In its release, Amazon points to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers that highlight this problem: "There are now more job openings (7.4 million) than there are unemployed Americans (6 million)."